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Premiere Issue: Health Technology Innovation Digest

A new, monthly roundup of tech-related news and breakthroughs driving momentum and change in the health care industry.

The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions regularly reports on developments in Health IT that aim to improve health outcomes for consumers and business results for providers. Most recently, these include:

Smartphone becomes eye care medical device

The Portable Eye Examination Kit (The PEEK) is a medical device that harnesses the power of mobile health (mHealth) technology to provide eye care to rural communities. Developed by a team in Kenya led by an ophthalmologist, PEEK utilizes a smartphone’s camera and flash with a 3D printed clip-on adapter to take a picture of the eye. This allows practitioners to conduct a number of standard eye tests. Tests are then geotagged using the phone’s built-in GPS, made into a patient record, and transmitted to a doctor for analysis. With access to necessary medical information, health care experts are then able to provide diagnosis and tailored treatment plans for patients living in rural communities. The device operates on solar power and costs less than hospital-based eye equipment. An estimated 80 percent of the 39 million people with preventable and treatable blindness could benefit from this device.

Mayo Clinic launches mHealth app to provide concierge medicine

Mayo Clinic has launched a subscription-based health app that offers real-time, 24/7 health care support to consumers. The program, Better, is used on smartphones and includes:

Real-time video communication with Mayo Clinic’s nurses

Access to the clinic’s database for personal, tailored health information

A “symptom checker” that includes the consumer’s health history

The Mayo Clinic hopes the app will provide consumers with easy access to health care providers at the clinic. The concierge medicine app complies with the federal health regulations regarding privacy of personal health information.

NIH offers grant awards for mHealth development

In late April, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a call for submissions of mHealth technology usage for grant awards of up to $500,000. According to the announcement, the awards will go to support mHealth tools that help improve communication between patients and providers, adherence to treatment regimens, and chronic disease self-management. In addition, the announcement encourages organizations focused on interventions that utilize comparative effectiveness analysis to apply, and indicates that funding will be particularly targeted at studying use among underserved populations. Eligible organizations include higher education institutions, nonprofits, small businesses, government entities, and more. When scoring the applicants, the reviewers will look for interventions that aim to “shift current research or clinical practice paradigms by utilizing novel theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions.” The grants will come out of two specific branches of the NIH: the National Institute of Nursing Research and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

The Boston Children’s Hospital is using predictive analytics to help with patient care in its intensive care unit (ICU). The system forecasts changes in a patient’s condition and allows practitioners to catch issues before they worsen. The Stability Index, developed in partnership with Etiometry, uses mathematical equations to quickly analyze a set of data and then project an outcome. It takes in clinical data from dozens of hospital monitors that track heart and respiratory rates and other vital signs to assess potential medical risks. The Stability Index’s information is then transferred to computer screens that physicians at the hospital use for risk assessment in the cardiac ICU. T3 (tracking, trajectory, and triggering) visualization software allows physicians to see a single view of the patient’s vital signs, instead of having to look across many different monitors and screens.

Heart disease-on-a-chip could be another step toward personalized medicine

Scientists from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston Children’s Hospital, the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Harvard Medical School have partnered to merge stem cell research with “organ-on-a-chip” technology. Using this combination, they have successfully grown human heart tissue that carries an inherited cardiovascular disease. The researchers focused their work on Barth syndrome, an X-linked cardiac disorder that is caused by the mutation of Tafazzin, one single gene. Barth syndrome is currently untreatable and causes problems with heart and skeletal muscle functions, mostly in boys. The researchers manipulated cells from the skin of two patients into becoming stem cells and then used the stem cells to grow on chips that had been lined with extracellular matrix proteins, mimicking their natural environment. As a result of this process, the scientists were able to determine that patients with Barth syndrome had weaker contractions and irregular tissue assembly. Future uses of this type of research could help in the growth of personalized medicine.

Related Deloitte Insights

Machine intelligence lets organizations use computer algorithms and cognitive agents to address a range of issues, combining the best of human and machine capabilities to automate workloads, help resolve problems before they affect the business, and simulate human thinking to perform increasingly complex tasks.

Some health care organizations are turning to remote hosting/managed services (RH/MS) solutions provided by electronic medical records vendors to run their EMR systems. RH/MS EMR systems share a number of potential benefits with the cloud, including the possibility of faster upgrades, improved scalability, and reduced IT management efforts.

The Connected Patient Challenge hosted by Boston Scientific called for companies to create innovative technologies to help solve common patient problems. This particular competition asked that companies solve specific issues, which garnered several good ideas. Incentives included a cash prize and the opportunity to work with thought leaders in the field.

Editors Choice

Some companies are using digital technologies to disrupt industries and business models, but that’s not the only way to succeed. Six enablers of digital transformation can help organizations create a competitive advantage and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

The CIO role has evolved to emphasize business acumen, but today, more than ever, organizations need their IT leaders to understand the technologies at the heart of business transformation, says Rent-A-Center CIO Angela Yochem.

Many CIOs and other IT executives have fully embraced flexible consumption, the IT delivery model focused on subscription and pay-as-you-go services; however, they still have work to do to convince their IT staffs of its benefits.

About Deloitte Insights

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